


Rhyme Nor Reason

by My Language Is Sarcasm (Gift_of_the_Dragons)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Gore, Clue game, Dark, Dead People, Fandom Allusions & Cliches & References, Gen, James Patterson, Nancy Drew Files, Plot Twists, Read at Your Own Risk, Scooby-Doo - Freeform, Sherlock Holmes - Freeform, Stabbing, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, What Was I Thinking?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 16:18:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1654778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gift_of_the_Dragons/pseuds/My%20Language%20Is%20Sarcasm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dared to spend the night in an abandoned house, five friends must now search for the killer hiding among their ranks while dodging death itself. Things aren't looking up as they are picked off one... by... one...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhyme Nor Reason

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Creative Writing course. Considering I got a 95/A, and only because of a few spelling errors and an angry printer, I'm (mostly) proud of myself.  
> Names are explained in the end notes, as are certain references made throughout.  
> Enjoy~

“Oh, wonderful,” came the snapped comment, given with a wave of his arms for dramatic effect. “Now are we not only locked in an abandoned house because of some idiotic bet, but it’s gone cliché on us and we have to find the murderer, like we’ve been sucked into some _Nancy Drew_ novel.”

He turned on his heel, raising one hand as he continued, “And it’s going to be the person least expected of course. Or it’s the– the butler, or _something_!”

A bored sigh came from behind him, a voice that dully but dutifully reminded, “There is no butler, Bert.”

He shook his head in response: “Regardless, Mary. Point is, we’ve been dropped into eighteenth century London. And I’m telling you, there is _no way_ that I’m Watson.”

Mary rolled her eyes before looking back at the body lying on the floor. “Shame it had to be Nick,” she murmured, seeing how the glassy grey eyes stared back at her, unseeing. On his other side, the other woman was pushing his short hair to the side, looking for a hint as to what killed him. “He, at least, had a sense of humour.”

A snort ripped through the air as the perpetrator tried to cover up the noise and failed. The guilty party shrank under the combined stares, turning away but for a moment, unable to be intimidated long. “Sorry,” he apologized, though he didn’t sound particularly regretful.

The woman suddenly stood, brushing her hands off on her pants. “Well, we’re not going to get anything done just standing around,” she decided, planting her hands on her hips in a decidedly stubborn manner. Her tone turned solemn as she observed, “Unless there’s someone in the house with us, then one of us had to have killed Nick.”

Everyone around her stiffened at the realization, and the air stank of suspicion and nervous fear. Anne rubbed her hands together as though she had everything all figured out. “There’s a candelabrum here,” she pointed out, “and it obviously couldn’t have fallen off the wall or from the ceiling. Someone had to have killed Nick with it, considering the blood on it and his head.”

Bert, who was swiftly returning to his usual, irritated self, grumbled, “Was it Colonel Mustang in the pantry with the candlestick?”

“This isn’t a game of _Clue_ , idiot,” Edward retorted. He had clambered up onto a moth-eaten armchair once the others had stopped staring at him, his legs thrown over the back of the piece, head hanging down by the floor. “Colonel Mustang isn’t a character – you mean Colonel _Mustard_ – and that’s a candelabrum, not a candlestick; a candelabrum holds multiple candles, a stick only one. Plus, we’re in the den, and the pantry isn’t even a location in the game.”

“Why you–”

Bert launched himself at the other man, landing on his chest, and the two began fighting, rolling off the furniture and onto the well-worn floor. Pointedly ignoring the pair of fighting males, Anne focused on only other person not trying to beat the living daylights out of someone else.

“Have you seen John?” she asked, raising her voice enough to be heard over the swell of sound behind her.

The other woman shook her head. “Not since we came here. He went with you, remember?”

“Yeah.” The word was ground out with a bitter edge; he had abandoned her in favor of exploration of the building almost immediately, despite her own (less-than-noble) intentions.

Mary took on an interesting expression and crossed her arms. “Maybe…”

The word was hushed, a quiet whisper of breath. Simultaneously, Anne gestured for Mary to continue on with her thought while the fighting came to a standstill behind them, the two men seeming to have sense that something important was occurring. They had stopped in an odd position: Edward had one arm cocked back while Bert had fisted the collar of his shirt, ready to lift the other into the air.

Without looking away from the female pair, Ed smashed his fist into Bert’s face; the older reflexively released the material he was holding, and by extension, the younger. A number of nasally swears slipped out as he tried to stem the flow of blood from his nose.

Continuing to ignore the comical fighting, Mary said, “Maybe John did it. He was the only one that was left alone, after all.”

Anne tapped her chin with one finger, thinking it over, while Edward returned to his chair. Bert sat by them, holding his collar against his nose. “Maybe, but we have to consider the circumstances,” she conceded. “This room was locked, remember?”

“It was?” Bert asked, voice slightly distorted by his damaged nose. He scowled at the unnatural pitch and shot a scathing glare at his attacker, returned by a childish look.

“Yup,” Edward cut in after he had pulled his tongue back into his mouth. “Remember? I tried to open it, but Mary said I shouldn’t.” Moving so he was sitting on the arm of the chair, Ed looked around. “Come to think of it, _how_ did Nick even get in here? I had to break a window and climb in.”

“You should know. You were with him,” Bert said, eyes narrowed.

“Relax,” Mary interrupted, hoping to stop the argument before it occurred. “Maybe they got separated. Right?” Ed nodded.

“Okay!” Anne chirped, eyes unnaturally bright. “Since there’s no plausible way both the murderer _and_ Nick could have gotten in here, short of breaking a wall or a window, or forcing the door down, and we can see that nothing – except the window, courtesy of you, Ed – has been broken, then…”

“Then we don’t know how they got in.” Glaring at the excited woman, Bert continued, “And if you say ‘we have a mystery on our hands…”

The smirk he received was enough of an answer.

They began compiling what they knew and what they thought they knew.

“Okay, so we came into the house at eleven-thirty.” Anne checked her watch. “And it’s now one-ten. Whoever killed Nick had to have done so in that hour and forty minutes.”

“No one else should have been on the grounds,” Mary added. “The last person before us should have been the gardener, who left at eight. He’s also the only one with keys to the estate, but he’s a really old man. I doubt he could’ve killed a fly, let alone Nick.”

“We all split up into groups,” Bert supplied, wincing at his voice again. “You went with John,” he pointed at Anne. “You went with Nick,” he added with a growl to Edward. “And I went with Mary.”

“We came in here on a bet,” Edward said, voice monotone, “to spend the entire night in the building until six in the morning. Then we would meet in the entry hall and leave, having won.”

“John went off about five minutes after we separated,” Anne sighed. “I think we were in the West Wing, but I’m not sure.” She glanced at Edward. “What happened to you and Nick sticking together?”

He made a disgruntled noise and crossed his arms, propping his feet up against one arm of the chair and his back on the other. “He said he had to take a leak, so I waited in the South Wing for a bit, maybe ten or twenty minutes, no more than thirty. I got bored waiting, so I went to go find him.

“I came back down to the entrance hall and went into the East Wing; if he got lost, he would’ve gone to the kitchens, no matter what anyone else told him to do. Before I got there, though, I saw something, well, shiny from beneath the door over there.” He waved a hand at the only entrance to the den; the blood there had long since dried, turning the carpeting black in that area.

“It wasn’t too hard to guess after that.” With a disgusted grimace, Edward wriggled a bit in his seat to find a more comfortable position. “I knocked on the door–”

“More like tried to break it down,” Bert muttered.

“–banged on the walls, then you guys came in and I ran out to find a window. We got lucky, I guess, that there was one. Dens don’t usually have windows.”

Looking around, Anne came up with an idea. “Why don't we leave for now? There's probably not much in here that'll tell us who did killed Nick – nothing that we can use, anyways. Ed, could you block off the door over there while we talk strategy? Thanks.”

She ushered the other two off before he could protest. Walking out into the hall, Edward looked around and saw a night table sitting beneath one of the ancient oil lamps. Picking it up and grunting at the unexpected weight (what was in there? Rocks‽) he hefted it over to the door, setting it in front of the wooden portal. Probably wouldn't do much considering the fact that it opened inwards, but if they had a problem with zombies, they should be fine.

Why they couldn't call the police and let them handle it Edward had no idea. Anne was simply not quite right in the head, he supposed; everything was her way. There was no highway to take when it came to her. And, unfortunately, it seemed she was quite gung ho about solving a murder, turning what should have been a normal night into some kind of James Patterson novel – sans the romance.

Straightening up, Ed looked around to locate where the three had gone off to. The carpeting, much like in the den, was a dull brick colour with a thick covering of dust. Come to think of it, why did she take Bert with her to talk strategy? He wasn't exactly the brightest crayon in the box, and most definitely not to turn to when it came to simple addition, let alone solving a murder.

A warped grin twisted his lips; Ed supposed he was still in shock over the sudden murder. They had been best friends – up until Nick's death, of course. One couldn't exactly be friends with a corpse. He had been the reason that they were both at the house, the only one that could convince Edward to take on the bet.

A bitter laugh spilled from his mouth and he pressed his head against the closed block of wood, gripping the table tightly enough that his fingers ached. A wave of grief pushed at his insides, turning them to lead as he resisted the urge to break something.

Something brushed against Ed's shoulder and he exploded.

In an overly dramatic entrance, Anne burst through a pair of double doors that led in to the study and took in the scene that greeted her. Bert was lying on the floor (again,) holding his face and swearing so eloquently that even a seasoned sailor would be blushing in embarrassment at his vulgar eloquence.

A small table was abandoned in halfway front of the entrance; it was likely the one that Ed had been using to block off the den, until he had been startled. Several feet away, four small, snowy impressions were visible in the rug where the table had originally sat, only visible because of the stark difference in shade in the two colourations. No other signs of the now-missing man remained, not even in the smallest spatter of blood the world had ever seen, or a few hairs scattered on the floor.

Feeling Mary at her shoulder, Anne moved further into the hallway to help Bert stand. Mary, after wavering where she stood, went to help.

“What happened?” Anne grunted as Bert stood, using the girls for balance.

“The b– idiot,” he corrected, glancing at Mary, “punched me again.” Anne sighed and shook her head. Men. “I was going to tell him you wanted to ask him something, but he attacked me and ran away.”

“Did you see where he went?” The shake of his head was all she needed.

Biting back a retort, she looked down the hall they were in; it met another corridor in a T-intersection. She could see some dust floating through the air, caught in the lamplight and shining like fireflies, and some closed curtains that shimmered softly, but no footsteps. The mess of grey and red expertly hid any sign of human habitation, making it impossible to discern which direction the missing man had gone in.

Anne shook her head in defeat and glanced at Mary, who was standing a bit dazedly yet attentively at Bert's shoulder. Snapping her fingers, she regained the other woman's wavering focus. “Mary, I need you to watch over Bert, alright?” The man huffed as though insulted but didn't interrupt. “If anything happens – and I mean _anything at all_ – then yell as loudly as you can. Just, just go and stay in the drawing room for now.

“Yell and go to the drawing room. I've got to go find Ed, alright?”

Mary nodded in understanding and Anne swiftly left, hoping she wasn't making a mistake in leaving them alone.

Out of everyone there, Anne knew she was currently at the greatest risk of being killed, considering she knew she wasn't the one that had offed Nick. Mary, while not a fighter herself, had Bert, who was more than capable of handling an attacker and protecting someone else at the same time. Edward, wherever he had run off to, was notably violent when it came to fighting. In fact, they would probably hear him yelling or breaking furniture as he beat them over the head with said furniture.

Sometimes, she wondered how she had become friends with such a seemingly sadistic person.

John, on the slim chance that he wasn't the killer – and how conflicted the thought left her, hoping that he wasn't yet wishing that he was – had been involved in wrestling in years, and couldn't be scared by anything. Well, anything but snakes, but that was the only exception.

Anne, however, was on her own. She did not have a weapon at her disposal or any knowledge of self-defense or any forms of fighting to draw off of. She was a weak link in the chain, and the thought made her shudder; a trickle of despair teasingly curled through her mind no matter how hard she tried to banish it.

Shrugging it off and struggling to ignore how it hovered over her shoulder, Anne opened the nearest door and peered inside. The room was dark inside, lit only by the light that sneaked around her body, leaving a blurry silhouette in the floor-bound corona.

Reaching through the threshold, she groped along the wall for a light switch, hesitating when she felt the round, plastic knob of a dimmer; okay, she could work with that. Turning the piece, first one way then the other, she huffed in disappointment when the room remained murky.

“Ed?” she called, though she heavily doubted that he would run into an unlit room.

He wasn't afraid of the dark, but there was little sense in hiding among the shadows unless something was after him. Shutting the portal, with extra care to keep the noise silent Anne turned around and felt a hand cover her mouth. The coppery scent of blood invaded her nostrils and she felt her throat burn slightly.

“Quiet,” the perpetrator hissed, wavering slightly on their feet. Anne nodded sharply and they let go of her, grimacing in pain. “We have to hide. I know who the killer is.”

A bloodstained hand tightly gripped her wrist and Anne felt herself pulled along the corridor. She was jerked along so hard her scarf slipped off her neck and onto the floor; she reached out a hand to grab it, opened her mouth to ask the other to stop; but the chance was lost, the scarf gone.

Another portal opened, a hand shot out and the lights flickered on, just as gloomy as the hall had been, revealing a decrepit bedroom. Mary shut the door after pulling the other female in and breathed in deeply.

“It was Bert.”

Her mouth fell open in disbelief. “Bert?” she repeated, uncaring that her voice had already risen to deafening levels. The other cringed at the pitch, hands reaching up to protect her ears. “There's no way he could have done it. He might get out of hand sometimes, but that means _nothing_! He's a good person, Mary! You know this!”

“Anne,” the younger said soothingly, “are you trying to convince me or yourself?” Not waiting for an answer, she plowed on, “I know what I saw, alright? Can you believe me? I've never lied to you, after all.”

Searching her eyes for any hint of a lie, and exhaling softly when she found none, Anne turned on her heel and dropped onto the bed, rumpling the faded emerald sheets. She drew her legs up to her chest, holding her shins tightly.

“It's just so hard to believe,” she murmured, staring blankly at the bleached wall as she tried to compute, to _understand_ what she had been told. “Bert? A killer? Why would he want to... to...” Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried again. “To kill Nick.”

The bed dipped slightly as Mary sat down, while the mattress shifted as she leaned back. “I wouldn't be surprised if John was helping him,” she confessed. “Those two have been friends for, well, ever. I doubt one of them wouldn't know that the other was a bomb waiting to go off. Figuratively, of course.”

Anne squeezed her legs tighter, shivering fearfully. Her old friend was doing nothing to alleviate her fears. Suddenly springing up off the bed, she smiled with false cheer.

“Then let's hope that we've only got one to worry about,” she sprightly said, but it was weak and her voice cracked. She wasn't fooling anyone, not even herself. It was too clear that the odds weren't on their side. A short, awkward pause followed and Anne coughed. “So, where do we go from here?”

A shrug answered her and Anne turned again, eyes drifting introspectively towards the ceiling. Her thoughts were still murky with clogging depression, but she could at least try to focus on surviving the night. The bed squealed as Mary stood up but the noise passed the elder right by.

“I guess we could go to the drawing room.” she mused. “We were supposed to meet everyone in there.”

She nodded sharply, finding that she liked the idea; forget the bet, she could kill her pride a bit and at least try to get everyone out so that they could call the police. It had been stupid of her to believe that they – that _she_ – could solve a murder mystery. This was reality, not a novel where (almost) everything turned out alright in the end.

While it may have taken her a while to come to that conclusion, it may not have been too late for them, with any luck. Planting a smile on her face, Anne turned around to suggest to Mary that they try and leave when she felt something brush against her stomach, followed by a cold, numbing burn.

An apologetic look crossed the younger woman's face as she tilted her head and sighed. “Sorry, Anne,” she said, carefully stepping around her friend as she fell onto her knees, hands clasped around her body. “But I've got work to do. See you later, maybe.”

Her hand flicked out and rolled the wheel to the 'off' position. The room fell to darkness, lighting up briefly as the door was opened before succumbing once more, the reverberating sound of the wood taking an ominous tone as the older woman disappeared from sight.

 

 

A hand snatched the back of his shirt, pressing his collar against his throat so the fabric choked him; his own hands reached up to loosen the unwanted pressure, to make his attacker release him, to do something, _anything_ to get release him from the deathtrap that his clothing had become.

The unknown person, seeming to realize what he had done, hastily released the shirt and began profusely apologizing while the other desperately gasped on the ground for air, massaging his bruised trachea.

“What the–” Edward coughed, tearing up a little at the sting. “What was that for?”

“Sorry,” the other moaned; his voice was familiar, but it hadn't quite struck the assaulted man who he was. “You were running too fast, and I didn't think, I just reached out and I almost killed you.”

It finally clicked in Ed's mind; his eyes widened, but he didn't move from his position on the ground.

“John?”

“Uh huh?”

The startled man sat up, briefly shutting his eyes at the sudden wave of vertigo that assaulted him. Once he recovered, he found John watching him nervously, which was quite unlike him; he was often seen as apathetic and stoic, not twitchy and liable to jump at the slightest noise.

“Where were you?”

He shuffled uncomfortably, further cementing the notion that there was something wrong with him. “I'd rather not talk about it,” he hedged.

“Nick's dead.” The words left a bitter taste in Ed's mouth, but it didn't distract him from the surprise that passed over the other man's face. “Where were you when he died?”

Again, the wrestler hemmed and hawed, but quailed underneath Ed's angry glare. “Alright, I'll tell you!” Taking a deep breath, he muttered, “Anne was flirting with me, so I left. I don't know what way I went, exactly, but I got lost and found myself in the basement.” John shuddered. “There were _snakes_ down there.”

That told the younger man all that he needed to know; he knew about John's ophidiophobia, well enough to know that even a little garden snake would send him into a state such as this. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes at what he considered an overreaction, he waved one hand through the air.

“Shall we go on, then?” When he was met with a blank look, he elaborated, “To find the others?”

“What if one of them is the killer?” he asked.

“What if _you_ are?” Edward asked. “What if I am, and I'm leading you into a trap of my own design?” He rubbed his chin and said, “Actually, I'd probably already have you moving by now. We would have a schedule to keep to, make sure none of you realized what I was doing...”

John had begun shivering, so Edward trailed off and clapped the older on the shoulder. “Let's get going,” he said with a wide, toothy smile. He knew it would do little in terms of reassurance, but it wasn't as though that had been what he was aiming for.

They wandered around for several minutes, each failure shortening Ed's temper further. Soon enough, he was running through the halls, a snarl on his face. Behind him, John had mostly recovered – despite his companion's unfailing violent streak – and his recoiling had mostly limited itself to particularly loud noises or when Edward passed too closely to him.

“Where are they?” the younger growled to himself, slamming another door shut as he found no one inside.

He stepped away and found the same room that he had blocked off earlier, wondering how he had not seen it before. Looking in both directions, he found no sign of anyone but himself and John, only the faux twilight produced by the ancient lights. Throwing up his hands, he turned back to the other man.

“I give up,” he finally conceded. “We're lost, they're gone. There's no other explanation for it.”

John nervously stepped away when Ed came too close for comfort. Clearing his throat to distract himself, he offered, “They're probably in the drawing room.” Seeing the confusion on his friend's face, the wrestler continued, “That's where Anne said we were supposed to go if we got lost.”

Edward crossed his arms, unwilling to admit that he had forgotten that particular detail. “Well, do you know where the drawing room is?” John shook his head. “And that's why we shouldn't listen to Anne.” He looked around again, glancing at the table he had been forced into moving earlier. “Well, the den and the kitchen is that way, so the entrance hall and drawing room shouldn't be too far that a way.

“Where should we go? To the drawing room, or the entrance hall?”

Running one hand over his face, John muttered something under his breath and sighed, sounding quite tired. “Might as well go to the entrance,” he decided. “We're more likely to meet up with everyone there than we are in the drawing room.”

They headed away from the table and the semi-blocked off room, Edward's temper noticeably cooling now that he had a goal to look forward to. The entrance room was not far, less than a minute's walk away. When the door was thrown open, and they glimpsed what was within, the younger's smile slipped away, replaced with horror.

John covered his face and bent over, feeling his throat constrict at the metallic scent that invaded his nostrils. Beside him, he could hear Edward swearing vehemently, and under the sound of that, the scuff of his boots as he turned on his heel and strode over to the nearest wall. Peeking through watery eyes and trembling fingers, he snuck a look at the scene again.

Blood. It was _everywhere_ ; it decorated the floors in large streams and wandering puddles; bathed the walls in smeared rows; even peppered the ceiling where it had fled to the sky. It was quite literally a bloodbath, but the dark humour failed to impress the disturbed man.

Whatever sparse furniture remained in the entrance hall was left nearly unrecognizable. Smashed, splintered wood coated in the crimson liquid, while the only piece left intact – a wooden chair, so frail and rickety that it didn't look capable of holding up a squirrel's weight, let alone a person's – solemnly stood beneath the unmoving body left to hang under the unused chandelier.

Thick frayed ropes had been crossed around his wrists. They reached up, parallel to his body and following the light's cables until they tied off at the base of the elaborate fixture. His scored body gleamed with wounds that still sluggishly dribbled with blood. The only consolation that the unfortunate audience was served was his downcast head, turned away and preventing the pair from seeing whatever horrified expression their friend had worn as he had been killed.

Biting down on his hand, John screwed his eyes shut as he felt the nausea hit him, threatening to overwhelm him. Wordlessly, he slammed the portal shut and ran past the other man, breathing in the fresher air as a drowning man would, relishing the cleansing dust that choked out the tangy taste of spilled blood the smell had left, bending over with relief.

Edward followed behind only moments after, his face still frozen in its ashen state. Slumping against the wall, John heard him say to himself, “Gotta be some sick freak doing this. Can't imagine why–” he cut off and covered his eyes with one hand, clearly remembering what lay in the room behind them, “–why anyone would do something... Something like _that_.”

Clenching the rug fibers in his hands, John steeled himself. Unsteadily rising to his feet, he tottered for several steps before falling back onto the ground, catching himself on his hands and knees. He rolled over onto his back, throwing his hands onto his stomach.

Lying there, he blankly stared at the white ceiling above him and proposed, “I say we sit here for a few minutes.”

“Agreed,” came the muttered reply.

Neither man could repress the instinctive flinch that wracked their bodies as a screech pierced through the air and walls of the ancient building. They allowed themselves enough time to numb their bodies and mind from what they had glimpsed – although it may have been the well-delayed shock finally settling in – before recollecting themselves.

“Two down, three to go,” Edward quietly said, crossing his arms and looking away from his companion. His eyes returned to the closed door against his will before shooting up to the dusty lamps that ran along the walls. “Assuming one of us is the killer, of course.”

He didn't want to think about it, not so soon after _that_ , but John could have been the killer. The bloody explosion they had escaped from could have been prepared in the time that the wrestler had been separated from Anne, just as easily as anyone else could have done it. Edward couldn't entirely be certain that he wasn't doing it.

It wasn't very common, but he had heard stories of people that had killed but having no recollection after the deed had been done. Not so much as a lick of memory. Ed played with the idea before ruthlessly crushing his misgivings. He didn't have any unexplained gaps in his memories, nor was he taking any type of medication, so he felt he should be safe from that possibility.

Even if he'd need counseling after this mess, assuming he escaped from it with his life.

Standing up, Edward began walking down the hall, feeling John's eyes following his retreating form.

“Where're you going?” the older slurred, still a little mixed up.

“I'm getting out of this place,” he called back, “and getting the police before anyone else dies.”

One person dead was devastating. Losing two people, so soon, so quickly and so violently was a calamity. He was already sick of people dying and wanted to end it before it got any worse and found someone else had lost their life at the hands of some sick psycho.

Despite that, Edward found himself somewhat glad when he didn't hear John following after him. He couldn't be entirely sure of the other man's intentions, and he couldn't afford to have a walking, talking, (shaking, scared,) liability shadowing his steps. It almost felt disloyal to leave him alone there, with only a door and some thin walls to separate him from the cadaver – and it felt so cold to think of their deceased friend as such – but he couldn't be certain anymore.

Finding himself back in the hall where he had abandoned the table, Ed strode down the dimly lit corridor, soft footfalls silenced as his confident stride transformed into a wary creep over the fluff-covered rugs. The grey lint was almost enough to disguise the once bright scarlet fibers, sufficient enough to hide the intruder's presence. Edward felt his breaths shrink to small puffs of air as he tried to quiet his presence as much as possible.

He quickly found himself passing by a familiar-looking hall; he could see the table from where he stood, only halfway blocking the entrance to the den. If he continued on his way, then it would be a straight shot to the servants' quarters, if Anne was correct in her schematics for the ground floor, and the back entrance. The front was obviously occupied at the current moment, and he had no wish to step into that mess again.

It occurred to him, as he headed for the abandoned gallery, that most of the building was composed of hallways. Everywhere they had gone, save for the entrance hall, the den, and whatever room Anne had dragged Bert and Mary off into, had been a corridor of one sort or another.

Halls, halls, everywhere, and death was always in sight; halls, halls, everywhere, nor anyplace to flight.

Eh, it wasn't perfect, but it would do. The idea was only furthered when Edward found a scarf lying on the floor, the white hue faintly glowing in the dusky light; he identified it as Anne's, and wondered when she had lost it.

' _Well_ ,' Edward found himself thinking, picking the soft cloth up, ' _if Bert was Watson, then I must be the ancient mariner_.' Carefully winding the article around his neck and wrinkling his nose at the cloying scent of dust rising from the scarf, he continued on his way.

Edward shortly found himself at a loss as where to go. He knew the general direction of the servants' quarters, but not the actual door that they lay behind. Opening up the closest room at hand, he glanced inside; as expected it was dark inside, but he didn't glimpse anything promising among the silhouettes. He made to leave and search anew when he heard a voice call out.

“Stop,” they pleaded, reaching a hand out from the darkness.

Against his better judgment – which screamed at him to shut the portal and run away as fast as his legs could take him – Edward remained stock still, allowing the unknown person to drag themselves into his line of sight. Her skin was pale and grey in the dim lights where it wasn't painted red, her face screwed up with pain when the illumination passed over, but she was unmistakable.

Ed carefully knelt on the floor, helping Anne to prop herself against the swollen threshold so she may sit upright. Despite the assistance, the effort left her breathing heavily, one arm clenched tightly against her stomach; he could see that the belly of her arm was, like her hand, drenched with the unnatural colour.

Keeping one hand on her shoulder, Edward asked, “Who did this to you?”

Anne heaved for several more breaths before she could work up the will to answer. “It was Mary,” she gasped. “I don't know why, but she's the one doing all this.” Exhausted, she closed her eyes and settled her weight more firmly against the door frame. “Go find John and Bert and get out of here. Call the police.”

He had flinched at the mention of the two other men, but she had ignored it or had not noticed. “You're injured.”

A frown crossed her face and she tried to draw herself up in an independent manner, sending him a glare as she did so. Compared to her normal demeanor, it was rather sad. Sad and pathetic.

“Go,” she insisted. “Get out of here, you crazy idiot. Someone's got to tell the police what's happened here.” She feebly shoved at him, the weak force not enough to knock him over despite his precarious perch. “If you can find the others, then it'll be all the better.”

Edward dropped his head, hiding the involuntary wince; no, it would not be best to mention how Bert had been found, hanging from the ceiling in the entrance hall; or how he had abandoned John in the belief that he may have been the one that had murdered their friends. With a single deep breath to steel himself, he swallowed his guilt and stood.

“I will,” he promised.

Anne smiled at him and leaned back against the wall again. “I'll just stay here, then. It'd probably be best if I didn't move around so much.”

Distantly nodding, Ed walked out, trying not to see how his friend had bit back a cry of pain as she moved too sharply. He regained his bearings, decided that the servants’ quarters were to his left, and purposefully strode over to the farthest door; he could see hints of worn baize peeking out from the edges of the wooden slab, back from when the house was still in use.

He pushed the door open and carefully stepped inside; the room was completely dark and a quick check for light switches found none. Ed blocked off the entrance once more and placed a hand on the right wall, using the plaster to keep himself on track. Much of it appeared to be a straight shot; no turns, no connecting rooms or halls. If he didn't know any better, he would have said that he should have been walking through the entrance hall by now– but what did he know?

When he came upon the door, he walked face-first into the rotted wood. No, he couldn't have simply come upon the metal handle or felt part of the sill; because he was Edward, he simply had to walk into the entrance itself. It shuddered on its hinges, the rusty metal groaning as it gave in, pushing outwards and revealing the servants' quarters, the moon gently shining through the bare windows, illuminating the room.

Several beds stood alone, pressed up against the walls; their frames lay bare, the wood in surprisingly fine condition despite the state of the rest of the house had been left in. The room was otherwise bare of furniture and, seeing nothing else of interest, Edward continued on to the other door.

He cursed when it refused to budge, not even a little. Pulling on it again, he heard the full _thunk_ of the lock in the threshold and threw his arms up in anger. He had already broken one window, and that was more than enough for him.

Ed may have been violent (and more than man enough to admit it,) but he didn't enjoy committing vandalism. It wasn't his style, not to mention it was illegal. Looking around for anything smaller than the beds and failing to come up with anything, he resigned himself once more that night.

A bed frame flew out one of the windows, accompanied by a loud _crash_ and _thump_ as it broke the glass, sending the shards flying, glittering in the moonlight in a briefly breathtaking show, before it landed onto the grassy knoll the building rested on.

After pressing the remaining shards out of the frame, he set his hands on the wood and prepared to vault himself through the now-empty window.

“Nope,” a voice called out from behind in a sing-song voice. Edward rolled his eyes and turned around, his hands raised to shoulder-height. And, as he had expected, Mary had entered the room, now leaning against one of the beds that hadn't been tossed out the window. “Why don’t we sit down for a minute and talk?”

Glancing at her hands – they were shoved into her pockets – Edward decided to take the safer route.

In one swift movement, he placed his own hand onto the wooden sill behind him and jumped, lifting his body up and through the empty frame, using his arm as a vaulter would use their pole to lift themselves over the bar. Mary’s shriek followed him through the window; it was disrupted when he heavily hit the grass, rolling to try and soften the impact.

Edward leapt to his feet, already running from the house. The area didn’t look familiar, but that didn’t matter; he had to get away and find someplace he could call the police. And an ambulance; with any luck, Anne was still alive. He heard the thump of footsteps racing after him and he pushed himself harder.

 

 

Anne’s world had long since faded to shades of grey, pulsing erratically against her strained breaths. Her body felt thick and frozen, a useless lump of flesh that couldn’t even support her neck; the only reason her chin wasn’t pressed against her collarbone was because it was resting against the wall behind her.

She could feel how her heartbeat stuttered weakly in her chest, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. In fact, many things didn’t seem to matter anymore. Everything simply floated in a haze of thought around her. A beam of light fell onto her closed eyes – she could see the blaze of red when one tried to block out the sun on a particularly bright day – and something touched her shoulder, voices swirling by her ear.

It didn’t make a difference to her, because she fell into the darkness only moments later.

When she next awoke, her head was pounding and her tongue felt like cotton. Something pulled against her stomach and, when she tried to look, was blasted in the eye with a small, intense light. One hand tried to swat out, but it was a weak, pathetic attempt that left her arm flopping by her side.

The blinding brightness disappeared, leaving large floating spots of purple and green in its wake. Behind the burns in her retina was a man wearing white, his features distorted by the obscuring colours.

“Sorry,” he said, though he didn’t sound very apologetic. “Do you remember how you got here?”

Anne opened her mouth to speak and coughed, her throat scratching angrily at the words that tried to come through. The man – was he a doctor? – left her vision for a moment, returning with a cup of water. She nodded her thanks and was allowed to drink in small sips, so she wouldn’t throw it back up immediately.

Licking her lips, she hoarsely said, “I remember the house, and people coming in, and…” Her eyes widened. “Is Ed alright? It was Mary, she killed Nick!”

The man seemed to glance at someone else, but when she turned her head to look, there was nothing there. Only a nondescript closed door and a bare, whitewashed wall. She suddenly felt nervous and attributed the feeling as worry for her friend. Mary, after all, had been the killer; she had stabbed her in the stomach and left her to die. Hadn’t she?

“Anne,” the man said, “I am Doctor Morris. This may be upsetting to you, but you don’t know anyone named Ed, or Mary, or Nick. You’ve been in a coma for the past five months.”

She found that all she could do was blankly stare up at the man, his features still indistinguishable to her. “What?” He nodded. “The house, the– the body, she killed Nick, I saw him! He was dead on the floor, the candelabrum–”

But he wasn’t listening. He had turned away from her, fiddling with something near her bed, producing a soft beeping sound. Anne tried to watch him, but she found herself becoming drowsy, and those spots kept getting in the way, twisting around so soothingly.

The muffled sound of the door opening drew her attention, and a familiar person came through. Her mouth refused to open, however, and she was forced to watch through half-lidded eyes as Ed spoke to Morris. He shook his head at the answer he received and leaned down over her, a sad smile on his face.

“It’s gonna be alright,” he whispered.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Bert’s name was derived from Herbert Jenkins, author of The Strange Case of Mr Challoner (1921), which details the first known use of portraying the butler as the villain; Mary Roberts Rineheart, who Mary was based on, clichéd the ‘butler-villain’ with her novel The Door (1930).  
> Nick took his name after Nicholas Blake, otherwise known as Cecil-Day Lewis, who wrote Thou Shell of Death (1936), which used the popular locked-room mystery. Edward comes from Edgar Allen Poe, who published the first locked-room mystery in The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841).  
> Anne is dually named after Anne Katherine Green, who wrote a number of legally accurate novels, and the missing person Lucy Ann Johnson, who disappeared in 1961. John received his name from both John Dickson Carr, who wrote The Hollow Man (1935), otherwise known as The Three Coffins, which is regarded as the quintessential locked-room mystery, and John Carpenter, the writer and director of the Halloween movie series (1978-present).  
> Doctor Morris was named after Frank Morris, one of thirty-six attempted escapees from the prison on Alcatraz Island and one of the five missing and presumed drowned.  
> References made throughout consist of the Nancy Drew mystery novel series; Dr. Watson from the Sherlock Holmes series; Colonel Mustard from the Clue board game; James Patterson, an author famed for his numerous crime novels; and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.


End file.
